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Opinion Contributor

States can avoid Minnesota's recount mess

Because most states count ballots on machines, the average shift in vote margins in statewide recounts is typically far smaller -- less than 0.03 percent.

The 0.02 percent change in Minnesota’s 2008 recount was consistent with that pattern. Given that Minnesota has largely the same voting machines in place, and only a small number of hand-counted ballots, a substantially greater margin shift is highly unlikely.

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Indeed, with more than 93 percent of the recount finished by Thursday night, Emmer had only reduced Dayton’s margin by 36 votes.

Though Emmer justifies the recount by suggesting it may detect errors in the voting process, this review should not delay seating a new governor. Passing long-sought legislative goals might be tempting, but Republicans should be wary of what will understandably be seen as a power grab. Pawlenty’s presidential ambitions would likely go up in smoke, and state political tensions might well reach a breaking point.

Instead, Minnesota and other states should adjust their laws governing automatic recounts to reflect current realities – and the 33 states without any automatic recount should establish one, as recounts uphold the value of every vote when an outcome is in doubt. But while a 0.5 percent recount trigger can make sense for state legislative races with smaller electorates, the trigger for statewide races should be smaller.

Minnesota, in fact, nearlly adopted a bill last year to lowerr the recount trigger to a still overly generous 0.25 percent. Given what really happens in statewide recounts with modern voting machines, we would recommend Arizona’s 0.1 percent trigger as a model for most states, perhaps rising to 0.2% for our smallest states.

Our ideal recount law also would allow candidates like Emmer to petition for recounts with larger margins than the automatic recount trigger -- but only if the recount does not prevent seating the likely winner and only if that candidate’s campaign or party is ready to pay for the recount if the outcome is not reversed. Local taxpayers in Minnesota are paying some $200,000 for this year’s recount, while Washington State’s gubernatorial election recount in 2004 cost closer to a million dollars.

We should also mandate post-election manual audits to verify vote counts in all races -- for even ballots in races won by substantial vote margins should be recounted if random audits uncover errors large enough to potentially affect the outcome.

Left unchanged, Minnesota’s automatic recount trigger is far too high – and has created the potential to turn recounts into yet another weapon in the unseemly partisan warfare that governs too much of our politics.

We hope Minnesota will survive this latest recount with dignity. And then join other states in establishing appropriate recount thresholds for future elections.

Rob Richie is executive director of FairVote, (www.fairvote.org), a national organization unaffiliated with FairVote Minnesota. Emily Hellman is a FairVote democracy fellow and author of a forthcoming report on statewide recounts.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article suggested that Minnesota legislation to lower the automatic recount trigger to 0.25% was vetoed. This provision was removed in a conference committee.